Anushka Sharma is a lucky woman. For her debut as producer, the actress has chosen a film which is far from the fantasy, feel-good films she has done so far. NH10 is dark, hard-hitting and always thrilling. Sharma has around five changes of clothes in the film. There are songs, but no one is lip-syncing or dancing to them. Midway through the film, her hair is dishevelled and make-up smudged. This is Anushka Sharma demonstrating her nirbhaya (fearless) side as both an actress and as a producer.

Anushka Sharma in a still from NH10

Sharma essays the role of a contemporary Indian woman, Meera. She has a well-paying job in one of the many glass structures that has emerged in the rapidly developing Gurgaon. She smokes. She drives, awesomely may we add. And then one night, she just about escapes an assault which would have made her one of the statistics. Her injuries from the episode may be visible only in the form of a bandage, but the damage is far deep and worse. Meera is emotionally scarred. Her husband Arjun (Neil Bhoopalam) decides the best way to heal the wound is to take a break and bring in her birthday. A villa is rented in an unknown, distant place. The route is NH10.

Once out of the city, danger lurks in every corner for the couple in Navdeep Singh's second film. At a dhaba, Arjun and Meera witness the kidnapping of a young runaway couple. Arjun decides to intervene, and is slapped. From here, the holiday/birthday goes horribly wrong.

As much as NH10 is about a couple's battle for life and a woman's resilience and resourcefulness when confronted with extraordinary circumstances, it is also about the choices people make when up against the unknown. In Arjun, writer Sudip Sharma creates a complex character, looking at how a man's bruised ego pushes him to the edge. When the city-bred Arjun decides to stand up against the wrong, he is doing the right thing, but he is also making someone else's troubles his own. In what seems first as an attempt to restore his pride and not necessarily save lives, Arjun finds himself tangled in a mess that he can't get out of. Dragging his already sensitive wife along makes the situation far worse. First time around when she was in danger, he wasn't by her side, and now he has landed her in a perilous situation.

In a pivotal scene offering great insight into the changing relationship between Meera and Arjun, Meera says how she counts on Arjun to be her protector and doesn't need a gun. This burden of expectation, however, soon changes.

It is hard to ignore the two key influences in Singh's film: the Nirbhaya case and Kill Bill. Here too, six men terrorise Meera and her husband. The metal rod, infamous as the weapon in the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi, also makes an appearance. Meera wears a yellow hoodie, as opposed to a one-piece, to become our very own The Bride who has revenge on her mind.

NH10 works best when it presents a portrait of the couple through their actions and its repercussions. Singh and Sharma combine well together to not make judgements, but instead have viewers assess the couple's decisions in danger. Thereafter, NH10 turns into a hunting expedition and a chase in a barren landscape. Imagine a less bloody version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre unfolding in Haryana. Having said that, for most part, it keeps you on the edge of your seats, largely due to Jabeen Merchant's skilful editing, which maintains a constant sense of thrill as Meera finds herself in one precarious setting after another. Here, NH10 feels reminiscent of British thriller Eden Lake, in which a gang of unruly kids torment a couple on their romantic weekend. Like it, NH10 is a case of a couple running into the wrong people. Once blood is on the hands of the innocent too, they too are guilty, and there is no way out.

Sharma carries the film on her shoulders, finely demonstrating that it takes rage to show courage. In the first few minutes, when Meera survives the first superbly staged assault, Sharma's body language and her expressions show how fear consumes a person. It's a compelling performance, which highlights Meera's transition from a scared, cautious woman to a gritty one ready to dive into the battlefield. Sharma makes you root for Meera and has viewers hooked to her fate as she becomes a lone soldier.

What Sudip Sharma does well is to show how a combination of violence and survival instinct changes a person. Only if he could offer more insight into the other characters other than just the fact that they are evil incarnate, then NH10 would have worked better. In NH10, the rural side is presented as no country for good, literate men. The few good souls are suppressed. Reality bites hard here. Singh shows the socio-economic-cultural divide between the urban citizens and the villagers. Caste doesn't matter to the former, while the latter are so obsessed with it that they'd kill for it.

Even as the edgy second half engrosses you, NH10 still feels contrived as it nears the finishing line. But that's not taking away from Sharma's performance, which adds vigour to an average screenplay and sets aside other characters as superfluous, so much so that you don't remember their names. Singh drags the climax, indulging in some cinematic flair, but it's also his way of displaying girl power in its most lethal form. It's not something you see every day in Bollywood. So why not?